Happy Thanksgiving!

Whether it's turkey, ham, or something else entirely, we hope you're able to enjoy something delicious this autumn! Good food, good friends, and good booze!

Fall is my favorite time of year, personally, though unfortunately we don't exactly experience seasons here on Guam. We did get something called tropical storm Kammuri yesterday though, so I suppose that'll have to be good enough. It sucks how a lack of seasons makes it really difficult to get into the 'holiday spirit' for just about any holiday. It never feels like the right time for any particular holiday, even the summer ones. Although, after the first few giant mugs of beer at Lutz's Oktoberfest celebration, combined with a liberal sprinkling of shots of German schnapps, it does start to feel pretty festive!

I don't think I'll personally be doing much this Thanksgiving. I have to work during the day and my wife certainly doesn't feel up to cooking or dealing with a large Thanksgiving gathering. She started chemo and radiation on Sunday, so far she seems to be tolerating it pretty well, though she's been dealing with some nausea (thankfully the anti-nausea medication the doctor prescribed seems to be doing the trick). This year we'll probably just go out to a restaurant to eat... probably something that isn't very appropriate cuisine-wise. The nicer places that are serving a special Thanksgiving meal are outrageously expensive, hundreds of dollars. 

Our work on AW has been progressing, despite everything going on and a coincidental set of common colds. For one thing, I think we finally managed to kill the bug lurking around the date and hangout scheduling system! I'm pretty happy with how the huge B-Corps event turned out, I think you guys will like it. There's even a special bad end available, involving Steve.

Besty is adding a little bit of r*pe into the game as we speak, which should spice things up a bit. It's been a fairly common request and one that offers a lot of potential possibilities in execution. He also managed to finish the cooking system, which as usual can be easily expanded at a later date. Right now there are several unique dishes you can cook, which for the most part are surprisingly normal and less phallic than I expected. Of course, you can also make some of these:

My work on the sex system has been dragging, unfortunately. A combination of complex code, not-very-fun writing, and just general life stress. Rather than waste too much time to inefficiency, I'm probably going to take a different tack and work on the Dairy Hand job. I figure I'll get more stuff done for you guys that way, rather than pounding my head on something I'm finding temporarily difficult. Plus, hucows are fun!

Thanks for all your support!

ThaumX

P.S. Here are some more cooking images to inspire you:

Got Milk?

Hello everyone, I guess it has been a little while, hasn't it?

There's been plenty going on with me, so I've been mostly working quietly. I don't want to fall behind with everything going on, so I've found it easier to just focus on content/code rather than dividing my time too much. More on that later though! Version 29 is going to have updates and improvements to the sex system, along with some other fun things.

Someone pointed out that we didn't have a cow ear/tail mod to go with hucows, so I went ahead and made the main planned hucow transformative called Bovinex. I also did some balance adjustments and made the full range of lactation ability accessible, with some other minor updates. The lactation system is now basically complete minus making some images for industrial-strength milk pumps and turning them into purchasable items at the Farm Coop. I also added a teat enhancement treatment and lactation training to the Farm Coop dairy, complete with mini-scenes for the three new treatments. I also added an encyclopedia guide to shed some light on the lactation system, simply because it's a bit more complex than most.

We're getting some new sex positions and actions for the sex system in version 29, along with enabling kink-specific content for actions and positions. Because there's writing needed to "kinkify" various sex actions, we won't be able to write everything for this update. I'm focusing some more on the popular kinks like impregnation, Besty and I will be teaming up some for some less-than-consensual behaviors, and Besty is working a bit on some more BDSM themed stuff. The hardest part is just getting the intelligent kink selection to work when selecting text to display from the content library.

Another little side project is work on an interesting event for the Bureaucratic Corps job, which is a bit different in that it doesn't directly involve the player. Rather, the player, in their role as an HR-type person, has to review a pretty serious event that occurred in the bowels of the Institute and decide how to handle it. A sexy horror event with some choices and moral quandary at the end. We also have a little art for the event, as your character is partially reviewing the actions of an Institute Containment Response Team. The story is mostly text, something that occurred a few weeks before the player is brought in to make personnel decisions. Because the events in the story have already happened, and the player only controls how to handle the aftermath, it's easier and more fun to use art with it. :D

This event doesn't go well for them...

On a more serious note...

The main reason things have been a bit hectic for me is that we discovered that my wife has cancer just over two weeks ago. It's taken a bit of mental adjustment, and we've had lots of appointments at the hospital. Thankfully, due to my unique work schedule as a shift worker, all the appointments have been outside my normal AW development time. Mostly all I've had to give up so far is sleep and free time.

To be clear, I'm not asking for time off or delays or anything like that. Honestly, because of the way my schedule works, I'm not expecting much change at all in the amount of time I spend working on AW. I still need to go to my day job, and that's where I do the bulk of my development (about 80% / 32 hours). So because I'll be at work anyway, there's no point in not working on AW while I'm there, right? The only time that really changes is when there's an IT emergency of some sort (generally, an ill-conceived patch or hardware failure), and that has nothing to do with my wife's health. The remainder of the time is usually at home at night when everyone is asleep or going to sleep, also something that's unlikely to disappear.

That said, I have to admit my mental state hasn't been great in the last two weeks. So my work efficiency has suffered a bit, but I'm already adjusting back toward something like normal. We're not that old, I'm something like an "elder millennial" having been born in the mid 80s, so we really weren't expecting a major cancer issue. Apparently, it's quite rare for someone my wife's age to get colorectal cancer. It was a bit of a shock... I suppose some adjustment time is normal. Then again, I guess nobody ever really expects cancer though, so there'd probably be some adjustment regardless.

In case you're curious, my wife has an aggressive stage 3 colorectal cancer. She's getting a chemo port put in shortly, and will be starting chemo and radiation probably in 2 weeks or so. after a full course of that, she'll be going into surgery. Unfortunately, we won't be certain of the N stage until after surgery. The MRI showed 6 lymph nodes, but the size of the nodes on MRI was inconclusive by itself for most of them. According to the oncologist today, her 5-year survival rate could be anywhere between 50 and 75%. It depends on those nodes, so we'll have to wait and see.

As always, thanks for your support. I'll keep doing my best for AW, despite the winds of chaos that seem to be blowing a bit stronger as of late. :D

The Horror Release - Version 0.28 Change Log

It's that time again, time for another release!

There are a few graphic elements in this release, but for the most part, it's just named "horror release" because of Halloween. The image of the bloody girl comes from the movie Naked Zombie Girl, which you can watch on YouTube. It's not great--the cinematography is particularly distracting--but hey, it has a naked girl killing zombies. The most interesting part for me was how they pretty much entirely avoided showing any nipples, the fake hair worked pretty well. Unfortunately, she doesn't actually kill zombies with a dildo sword, because that'd be awesome.

Anyway, back to the release!

We've spread out our effort somewhat this month, adding smaller chunks of content all over the place. There are still some cool larger things though as well, particularly in the form of main story content (female start), school content, and a unique fair event at the Farm Coop. We've been trying to take everyone's feedback in the survey to heart, and have been focusing a bit more on fetish content and other suggestions. We're always open to suggestions and ideas, so you don't need to wait for a poll or survey! We know we aren't perfect; your feedback is very important for making a better game :D

We've also got a few areas of code additions or improvements this month, mostly planned items such as custom action buttons and code surrounding children. Still, these are primarily to support adding content, so they haven't taken up a lot of development time compared to the major systems. Custom action buttons, for example, are important for adding unique action prompts, such as those needed for quests and the main story. Genetic code helps create children, which are needed for content surrounding any of the PC's bundles of joy. 

We've also been expanding some of the things to help bring the world and certain things to life. Random events, small observations or occurrences that happen in various locations, and things like global parsers to modify game text based on bimbo level or certain kinks. We've continued our debugging efforts as well because things are always better with fewer bugs!

Change Log:

Words: 2,032,048

Characters: 12,185,881

Code Lines: 187,510

Known Issues:

We've received some varying reports of issues revolving around the system for scheduling dates or hangouts, such as planned dates disappearing from the schedule. Unfortunately, Besty, myself, and some of our testers have been unable to replicate the issue. To be clear, we try to replicate a bug so we can figure out what's going wrong (and therefore fix it), and not because we don't believe the reports. So, if you encounter something weird that happens with the date and hangout scheduling, please let us know about it. We'd really appreciate information on what you happened in the game between scheduling and things going awry, including things like saving/loading, etc. Also, the situation that you scheduled the date in (location, who contacted who, etc) could also be useful. 

Changes:

ThaumX

• Added eldritch horror mechanics.
• [female start] New main story event and quest.
• Lily will now text the player on Sunday after exiting the prologue.
• The player must show up at Lily's place to meet her for the first time.
• It's a scene where the player visits Lily's basement and learns more about her role in the grand scheme of things.
• Failure to show up results in a bad end when Lily "recycles" you.
• Oldest Profession school content added for all the courses offered.
• Includes variable "lessons" for the Jobbing 101 and 201 courses.
• Rewrote and expanded Besty's new Maid Pouffiasse school content.
• Children objects added to the game.
• Children are now generated when the PC gives birth (and isn't a surrogate).
• Children have traits based on simple genetic output using the parent's appearance traits such as hair color.
• Children may be named by the player after giving birth.
• The player's children are now displayed in the social menu, with basic information including age, growth, and physical traits.
• The child class has been set up for more complex interaction with children at the Appletree creche.
• Includes support for "special" children, such as those fathered in a crazy experiment or by aliens or something.
• Children persist through saves of course, but can not currently be interacted with (that's coming a little later).
• The <<has>><<orhas>><<or>> AW trait/kink logic macro had a hidden bug discovered and fixed.
• A good deal more existing content should now change as intended based on the player's character.
• A new Totally Accurate™ documentary about Stalin and the USSR now occasionally can be found on TV at all hours.
• Womb burst threshold math adjusted to be more forgiving.
• The benefit of multiple elasticizing treatments is now multiplicative rather than additive. 
• The womb burst bad end now uses the correct image.
• Animal hair and tails are now a thing, so you can become a Neko girl.
• You can have features from a cat, dog, or fox.
• Get the experimental treatment from Nekomatics in the medical district.
• Parser functions contain basic descriptions of the ears and tails.
• The player's character description describes the ears and tails, but currently little other content describes these features.
• Code support for non-human dongs has been added, but parser support has not yet.
• NOTE: Nekos and some fancy cocks are pretty much the whole scope of what we're planning here.
• If there's an outpouring of support for more furry-lite type things, we may consider adding them (if easy enough) or slating them for after 1.0.
• The Tummy Hugger pregnancy tracker output formatting has been fixed.
• There is now an extra sperm removal process to make sure even special sperm is removed from the fallopian tubes after conception.
• Improved the dialog system that utilizes SugarCube's native dialog windows.
• Dialog windows now refresh the UI on close to account for any time/changes that happen while the dialog is open.
• Fixed the no-cleaning cheat so that it actually works.
• Improvements and fixes to the fertility system in regard to the Multiple Ovulation mutation.
• Adjusted the time spread of ovulation to be more effective/fun.
• Days to ovulation information is now properly calculated based on the next potential ovulation in the spread.
• Further ovulations in the spread are prevented if the player conceives, preventing sudden twin-womb pregnancies.
• If the player has the toilet fertility module installed or the fertility seal tattoo, the main phone UI display of the player's cycle will be more accurate.
• Besty bug causing player characters to wake up too-damned-early has been fixed.
• Added Custom Action Button system.
• Allows unique action buttons to be used for specific actions, quests, and events without hardcoding new buttons.
• Gives access to creating action buttons to mod authors.
• Added a system of global text parsers to alter and substitute words across the game based on central values.
• Alters all game text, so it is intended to represent a change to how the character sees the world in addition to just dialog.
• A bimbo score of 50 or more causes the most extensive set of changes to occur.
• Having the slut kink (or ramped up evolutions like hyperslut) causes some changes like sometimes describing cocks more positively.
• Having the cumslut trait will sometimes cause cum to be described more positively.
• Example: "He sprayed baby batter all over!" can become "He sprayed delicious baby batter all over!"
• Slightly increased the rate skill points are gained.
• Further increased skill point gain rate for schools.
• Created new passage tester dev tool to aid proofreading/editing new content
• Tweaked the exposure threshold for the lower body as it counts for being exposed in public.
• Several other things I've totally forgotten about, usually minor. 
• Random roving editing/correction of Besty's writing

Besty

• Cooking is expanded with some new recipes and ingredients.
• New events:
• Bridge area
• "Free bodies" downtown
• Mall area
• Fert Corps street
• Fert Corps redneck Fair with various events added. You can visit it on 19-21 of April at the north of Farm Coop.
• New TV content - "My little horse girl" episode
• Maid pouffiase school content for all courses.
• Fully implemented exercise system. It changes your tone if you work out enough. And if you neglect any physical exercises for long enough you'll get weaker. Whoa, just like in a real-life!
• Fully implemented nutrition system too. Your weekly spending on food (Sunday "week summary" window) affects your nutrition as well as eating at fast food in the mall and other places. Exceeding your calorie intake will result in gaining weight while exercising and a more healthy diet will allow you to lose some weight.
• Small one-line flavor events added to some major locations.
• Several bugs fixed:
• Athletic clothes don't disappear after buying anymore :D
• Error on subtracting like from NPC that calls you to hang out
• Sex with stripers fixed.
• Items don't seem to be removed from the "owned" list when placing them somewhere SRM
• Friends convos go in circles bug fixed
• Tone level changes during prologue fixed.
• Contacts disappearing overnight fixed
• Saving is no more available at the schools.
• School NPC interactions fixed.
• And many many more...